What is contemplative computing?

Contemplative computing may sound like an oxymoron, but it's really quite simple. It's about how to use information technologies and social media so they're not endlessly distracting and demanding, but instead help us be more mindful, focused and creative.

About Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

I write about people, technology, and the worlds they make.

My book on contemplative computing, The Distraction Addiction, was published by Little, Brown and Company in 2013. (It's been translated into Dutch (as Verslaafd aan afleiding) and Spanish (as Enamorados de la Distracción); Russian, Chinese and Korean translations are in the works.)

My next book, Rest: Why Working Less Gets More Done, is under contract with Basic Books. Until it's out, you can follow my thinking about deliberate rest, creativity, and productivity on the project Web site.

Sports

One of my favorite places in the world is Edinburgh. I first went there in graduate school, and spend several days at the Royal Observatory, and several nights wandering around; more recently, my wife and I spent a great weekend there when we were on sabbatical.

Scientists have known for some time that the human brain’s ability to stay calm and focused is limited and can be overwhelmed by the constant noise and hectic, jangling demands of city living, sometimes resulting in a condition informally known as brain fatigue…. But an innovative new study from Scotland suggests that you can ease brain fatigue simply by strolling through a leafy park.

Researchers... at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and the University of Edinburgh attached... portable EEGs to the scalps of 12 healthy young adults. The electrodes, hidden unobtrusively beneath an ordinary looking fabric cap, sent brain wave readings wirelessly to a laptop carried in a backpack by each volunteer.

The researchers, who had been studying the cognitive impacts of green spaces for some time, then sent each volunteer out on a short walk of about a mile and half that wound through three different sections of Edinburgh….

What they found confirmed the idea that green spaces lessen brain fatigue.

When the volunteers made their way through the urbanized, busy areas, particularly the heavily trafficked commercial district at the end of their walk, their brain wave patterns consistently showed that they were more aroused and frustrated than when they walked through the parkland, where brain-wave readings became more meditative.

Christine Rosen has a great term, "egocasting," to describe the enclosed, self-preferring world of RSS feeds, music, and news that we cue up for ourselves. One of the things that egocasting does is encourage us to interact with that often-comforting, often-distracting world instead of people around us or our immediate surroundings. Sports Illustrated has a nice piece about how this is affecting team cohesion in professional sports:

Ask many coaches, general managers and older players and you'll hear a common gripe: chemistry on teams has been altered because of modern technology, and not for the better. The rise of smartphones, with all their instant-communication and entertainment options, have created insular worlds into which distracted players too often retreat instead of bonding with teammates....

"There are times I get frustrated, as an older manager," said Ottawa Senators GM Bryan Murray, 68. "You get on the bus after a game and look back, and all you see are guys on their cellphones. Whether they're calling their agent or a guy on another team, I don't know. It may be to their wife, but more than likely to somebody else. Sometimes it's about getting too much ice time, but most of the time it's about not getting enough ice time or some other issue."...

"When you get on the bus now to go to a game, everybody's got their headphones on, or staring at their phones instead of sitting there talking," said former NHL defenseman Rob Blake, who retired last year and now works in the league's front office. "But now where I've seen [a difference] most is in the dressing rooms. You always had a team stereo, and you always had one guy put the music on and you always had a team song. Now, guys have their own headphones. You don't even really need a team stereo anymore, because they're all listening to their own music."

Not to pick on professional hockey: managers in baseball, football coaches, and basketball players all report similar things in their own sports:

Reminiscing recently to the Quincy (Mass.) Patriot-Ledger about the 25th anniversary of his 1985-86 Boston Celtics' NBA championship team, Hall of Famer Bill Walton seemed grateful that he played when he did.

"It was a very close team, on and off the court,'' Walton told the newspaper. "It was an era that predated smartphones and headphones (though the first commercially available cellular phones came in 1983).

"We played together, practiced today, lived together. We celebrated together. We did everything together. What Larry [Bird] set up for us at the Scotch 'N Sirloin after the games, all the events we went to together, the road trips, we spent all of our time together. We were always going out to dinner, to the movies. We were always just doing fun stuff."

it's unclear whether today's shrinking pool of criminally minded American kids would be willing to put in the time to properly develop the skill. "Pickpocketing is a subtle theft," says Jay Albenese, a criminologist at Virginia Commonwealth University. "It requires a certain amount of skill, finesse, cleverness, and planning, and the patience to do all that isn't there" among American young people. This is "a reflection of what's going on in the wider culture," Albenese says.